Renewal of Baptismal Promises

The official Baptismal Rite of the Catholic Church is a set of statements the elect must declare their faith in, in order to get validly baptized and confirmed into the church. If you can profess each part genuinely, then you can have full confidence in your faith having been formed enough to be baptized! The profession of these statements is done between a "celebrant" and the "elect", where it goes something like:

Celebrant: Do you believe in Jesus Christ?
Elect: I do.

Once the elect says "I do" to each statement, the celebrant then baptizes the elect in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

To ensure you have a true, strong conviction about all of the statements to profess and declare in the Rite, I have broken down the Rite into a bulleted structure:

Renunciation

Before professing faith in God and His Church, the rite first calls the elect to reject Satan, sin, and all forms of spiritual opposition to God:

  • Renounce Satan
  • Renounce Satan's works
  • Renounce Satan's empty promises

Creedal Professions

The Trinity

  • God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth
  • Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord
    • Incarnation: Jesus born of the Virgin Mary
    • Jesus' Death and Burial
    • Jesus' Resurrection
    • Jesus' Ascension
  • Holy Spirit: who He is and His role in sanctification

Holy Catholic Church

  • Papacy / Primacy of Peter
  • Apostolic Succession
  • Magisterium
  • One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church

Eschatology (The Last Things)

  • Communion of Saints
  • Forgiveness of Sins
  • Resurrection of the Body
  • Life Everlasting

Sacraments

  • Baptism - Purpose and Method
  • Eucharist - Real Presence


Final Notes

The Rite is a simplified, question-and-answer version of the Nicene Creed; a creed Catholics profess at almost every Sunday of the year since the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The Creed was written to formalize the faith and combat heresies present at the time, and as such contains additional theological precision than necessary for the baptismal rite.

In order to be baptized and confirmed Catholic you must still go to a local catholic parish and be formed in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA). The pages on the above rite, and this site overall, is intended as a guide to assess beliefs before/during/after OCIA/baptism in totality.

Fun fact: A curiosity and inclination toward pursuing the divine is understood within Christianity as a spiritual nudge from God in the form of grace. In other words, the desire to seek God is itself an invitation from God to keep going!



Reference(s):

Roman Catholic Church. Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Easter Vigil - Celebration of Baptism (nos. 55-59). United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).